Not always a cheery place...

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The desert was a hard place, and the settlers were hard people.  The Mormons had a communal ethic that helped them work together and survive locusts, Indian attack, and isolation.  There was a time of fear when the Mormons of Utah nearly went to war with the rest of the US to keep their plural wives.  Later, when polygamy was abandoned, pockets of polygamist holdouts hunkered down in the desert, where they remain.

Zion National Park is an upbeat place where retired admirals in crisp white baseball hats climb on the shuttlebus to see the Hanging Gardens.  Mainstream Mormons in Springdale present a cheery facade, while their dark cousins scratch out a living in the outback.   Back in the slot canyons where the sun seldom shines, secrets from the past--best forgotten--lie hidden.

Read this new mystery about the dark size of Zion

It's about a deadly secret that's uncovered when a Mormon--very much like Mitt Romney--runs for political office.

Max Berkeley hopes retirement won't be a long, slow slide to the grave. His wife Isabel prays that traveling with an ADHD husband in a trailer the size of a sardine can won't land her in the funny farm. And now they're taking their shakedown cruise--to the dark canyons and shining pinnacles of Zion National Park. In the heartland of polygamy.

Among the Mormons, businessman Jesse Cage is a shoo-in for governor. He's got an easy smile, a strong handshake, devotion to the church, and a mission to test pilotless drones for the war on terror. But no ones knows what goes on in his isolated desert compound. Until Max and Isabel go snooping.

Cage has robotic killing machines. Max and Isabel have their pluck and their wits. Can they stop Cage before he spreads his own brand of evil throughout Utah and the nation? Only if they uncover the Mormon's long-buried secret, hidden in the folds of Zion Canyon.

Available from Kindle Books, for only 99 cents.

Thirteen ways to die in Zion

1. Automobile mishap--off the switchbacks on the way to the tunnel
2. Struck by lightning on Angels Landing
3. Fall from trail to Angels Landing
4. Heart attack on the trail to Angels Landing
5. Lost without water
6. Flash flood, trapped in the narrows
7. Wildfire traps you on mesatop at Observation Point--it's jump or burn

1. Snakebite or bee sting, scorpion or tarantula--your choice
2. E. coli in your burger
3. Domestic violence in a trailer too small
4. Depression and suicide after reading this blog
5. Cougar chews on your leg while a California condor eats your liver
6. See below

A quick smoke before a fast ride through Zion